Elite Citizen Women and the Origins of the 1 Hetaira in Classical Athens 2 3 4 REBECCA FUTO KENNEDY 5 6 7 8 Introduction 9 If you open the Liddell–Scott–Jones dictionary to look up the word 10 hetaira, you find the definition “courtesan.” The recognizable English 11 word provides a reassuring sense of comprehension, a sense that is 12 un­fortunately false. Greek does not always translate easily into English 13 and often readers are compelled to examine cultural, political, or socio- 14 historical contexts for a word before making a decision on how to trans- 15 late it. Some words, therefore, have extensive entries in our dictionaries. 16 Words that denote women’s social statuses, however, typically do not. 17 Rather, LSJ, assuming that the social statuses of women are transparent 18 and obvious, hides the complexities that surround the words applied to 19 these women or how they are represented generally in image and text. 20 When scholars see an image of a woman or read the name of a woman 21 in a forum for public audiences, like comedy or oratory, they immedi- 22 ately make a series of assumptions about the woman’s identity, including 23 her social position, occupation, and legal status. In images, a woman is 24 immediately deemed a prostitute, if nude, or if dressed but playing a 25 flute, or if handed a change purse.1 If pictured at a symposium, she is a 26 hetaira. The term has a basic meaning of ‘companion’ (on analogy with 27 hetairos)2 and is almost always, except in limited cases, translated as 28 “courtesan.”3 Courtesan is itself a vague and culturally contingent word, 29 especially in the nineteenth century when our lexicon was produced. 30 According to LSJ, it is to be neither a common prostitute nor a married 31 woman but something in between. How scholars have dealt with this 32 ambiguity has varied, but interpretation has fallen strongly on the side of 33 “closer to prostitute than to wife” and many scholars consider hetaira a 34 synonym for prostitute, especially since they believe that only prostitutes 35 attended symposia.4 The ancient sources, however, tell a different story 36 from the narrative driven by these lexical assumptions. The term hetaira 37 was used in archaic and classical Athens to designate both a status and a 38 set of behaviors. For example, there is evidence that the status of hetaira S39 designated a woman who could not, for a variety of reasons, contract a R40

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1 formal marriage. This use of hetaira to designate marriageability occurs 2 only in the fourth century.5 In the late sixth century, in Athens and in 3 some Ionian Greek poleis, I will argue that the word hetaira designates not 4 a status but a person associated with a set of behaviors typical of the 5 sympotic culture of the Greek elite. When scholars collapse these histori- 6 cally distinct uses of the term hetaira, they imagine a social world based 7 on a strict wife-whore dichotomy. The mechanical application of this 8 dichotomy has created basic misunderstandings of the position of some 9 women, particularly noncitizen women, in classical Athens. 10 The wife-whore dichotomy underlies many approaches to women in 11 Athens and intersects with scholars’ use of the language of respectability. 12 They typically label a woman as disreputable if she is named in the 13 courts, on the comic stage, or appears on a sympotic imaged. It is a short 14 step to labeling her a prostitute, which then is assumed to exclude her 15 from the category of wife and citizen.6 Scholars identify this strong wife- 16 whore dichotomy in a variety of ancient sources and claim that it is an 17 unbreachable ideological barrier for the ancient Athenians. As Madeleine 18 Henry writes, “Erotic pleasure and legitimate marriage are classified into 19 categories of thought . . . ​which are firmly separated from one another.”7 20 This dichotomy exists in some of the language of Athenian orators and 21 comedy. But not every woman in Athens was either a citizen wife or a 22 foreign prostitute in reality (or even, I would argue, ideologically). Recent 23 scholarship has questioned this dichotomy.8 Unfortunately, these discus- 24 sions have frequently started from the assumption that noncitizen 25 women were mostly sexual laborers. Because a ‘respectable woman’ was 26 separated or secluded from civic life (except in religious contexts), these 27 noncitizen women, who might appear in public, were ‘disreputable,’ that 28 is, sexualized.9 This sequence of assumptions misrepresents women and 29 classical Athens for several reasons. First, the wife-whore dichotomy does 30 not accurately reflect classical Athenian gender ideologies or practices. 31 Second, the category of ‘respectable’ is ambiguous with respect to the 32 behaviors and statuses attached to it. Finally, this approach privileges 33 ideology over reality: even if an author attempts to limit a woman to the 34 status of wife or whore, her lived experience likely defies such broad gen- 35 eralizations and easy categorization.10 36 Hetairai have been frequent victims of scholars’ misleading applica- 37 tion of the language of respectability. One issue is that it is unclear why 38 our sources call some women hetairai. The status of those women is fre- 39S quently vague. Traditionally scholars have assumed that the difference 40R between a hetaira and a pornê was class but both were prostitutes.11 They

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assimilated a hetaira to the modern courtesan, a type of mistress or kept 1 woman who participated in the elite social life of various periods of 2 European history, particularly, the sixteenth through nineteenth centu- 3 ries. These women were not quite prostitutes but not quite wives (though 4 some became wives). Some were aristocrats; some were from the working 5 poor. Their lifestyle, however, was marked by access to wealth and lux- 6 ury. A courtesan socialized with the elite, ran a salon, modeled for artists, 7 and earned a living by finding a man or men of wealth and influence to 8 provide them with much needed income or goods or even homes.12 A. W. 9 Gomme (1925, 16–7) rejected the idea that there was such a class of 10 women in classical Athens, an idea that came, it seems, both from com- 11 parisons of women like Aspasia to the courtesans of the modern world 12 and from the projection of ideas from Second Sophistic works like Ath- 13 enaeus’s Deipnosophists and Lucian’s Chattering Courtesans back into the 14 fifth century BCE. The idea of a high-class prostitute known as a hetaira 15 has persisted in scholarship, especially over the last four decades when 16 scholarship on women’s lives, and prostitution in particular, has prolifer- 17 ated. The figure of Neaira has loomed large in connecting the term itself 18 with symposia and the image of the kept woman.13 19 Another confusion stems from an insistence on the term’s consistency 20 in use over several centuries. In particular, the hetairai of the second cen- 21 tury CE have been conflated with the term as used in the fourth century 22 BCE to refer to women who were undowered and without a kurios living 23 in the city.14 These women were sometimes citizens, but were most fre- 24 quently metics who had either moved to Athens voluntarily or who were 25 freed slaves. Because they were without dowry or kurios, they were con- 26 sidered unmarriageable and, as such, could only be the ‘companions’ or 27 ‘girlfriends’ of men. They were thus ‘sexually available’ outside of the 28 legal bonds of marriage. Some of them likely worked as prostitutes, but 29 not all. Their status as without a kurios (or autê hautês kuria; cf. [Dem.] 30 59.46 and Antiphanes, fr. 210), however, left them vulnerable, and men 31 who mistreated them or sexually assaulted them were not accountable in 32 law.15 This precarious status likely led some men to view them as the 33 equivalent of prostitutes, but the term itself was not necessarily synony- 34 mous with prostitute. In addition, as I argue in this article, the term 35 designated elite citizen women who participated in symposia and a gen- 36 erally luxurious lifestyle in the late sixth and early fifth centuries. When 37 these different uses of the term are conflated and combined with social 38 prejudice, it leads to a confusion of the women’s behavior (party going) S39 and status (unmarriageable) with one potential occupation (sexual labor), R40

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1 a prejudice that orators like Apollodorus exploited to great advantage. 2 Neaira receives the status of autê hautês kuria by the polemarch when he 3 resolves a dispute over Neaira’s legal status between Stephanus and 4 Phrynion ([Dem.] 59.46). Apollodorus says that she behaves like a hetaira 5 (partygoer, 59.24), but she is legally her own kurios (and so likely unable 6 to contract a marriage). 7 In what follows, I disentangle these conflations and argue that one 8 possible origin for the term hetaira might explain the long association of 9 hetairai with symposia, luxury, and wealth. The hetaira in this context, 10 according to Leslie Kurke, is no different from the pornê, but was 11 “invented” as a way of differentiating elite social practice from non-elite. 12 Kurke situates this process of invention within the framework of habro- 13 sunê, the imitation of Eastern luxury culture by elite citizens.16 I agree 14 with this framework, but suggest instead that the association of women 15 known as hetairai with the symposium derives from the social habits of 16 elite women, many of them either foreign wives or metroxenai (daughters 17 of foreign mothers), who shared a common luxury culture with their 18 male counterparts. These women frequently had ‘bad’ reputations in 19 Athens, but they were, by most standards, established as ‘respectable’ 20 citizen wives. After a discussion of sympotic culture and elite women’s 21 possible participation, I examine the lives of two historical Athenian citi- 22 zen elite women who embody both the lifestyle of habrosunê and of the 23 hetaira as our ancient sources seem to define it. 24 25 Hetairai among the Citizens Elite 26 27 Athenian elite culture found expression in the symposium, the domain of 28 men and their erotic and political discourse. Sympotic activity excluded 29 women, it is assumed, unless they provided some entertainment, primar- 30 ily as hired sexual laborers.17 The evidence for these assumptions comes 31 from later practice and contemporary vase imagery, where scholars con- 32 fidently identify any women in a sympotic setting as an hetaira. Later 33 practice, however, is often a poor guide to earlier behavior and there is 34 no evidence before Herodotus of the word hetaira being used to denote a 35 type of prostitute.18 When we examine the evidence for elite practice 36 without the faulty assumptions, a different picture emerges of the pos- 37 sibilities of elite behavior in the late sixth and early fifth centuries. 38 In the lyric, elegiac, and epinician poetry of this period, the word 39S hetaira never denotes a prostitute and frequently lacks eroticism. In Sap- 40R

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pho, Leto and Niobe are hetairai (fr. 142), as are Sappho’s own circle of 1 female friends for whom she sings (poem 160). In Pindar’s Pythian 3, the 2 hetairai are the female age-mates who would have sung the bridal song 3 for Asclepius’s mother, Coronis. In Pythian 9, Pindar says of the Naiad 4 Creusa: “She loved not the path walked to and fro before the looms, nor 5 the pleasures of dining with her oikoriai hetairai (female house-mates).” 6 Pythian 9 is the first text to connect the hetairai with the “pleasures 7 of ining,” perhaps a reference to symposia.19 Although it is assumed 8 that only elite citizen men (hetairoi) dined in luxury together (in their 9 ­hetairiai), our sources suggest that among elite families and some non- 10 Athenian Greeks, women also had dinner companions and enjoyed “the 11 pleasures of dining,” and not just with household servants, but with 12 ­visiting women, like female relatives and friends, and occasionally even 13 men.20 14 Beyond the use of the word hetaira, readers of archaic sympotic poetry 15 have imagined that the eroticized women were prostitutes. There is no 16 reason, however, that these women could not be citizens and the objects 17 of male seduction in elite discourse.21 The woman addressed as a “Thra- 18 cian filly” in Anacreon, fr. 417 PMG (discussed by Kurke at length), may 19 not a prostitute at all, but an elite girl or young woman whom the poet 20 wishes to seduce, a foreigner girl, or a metroxenê of Thracian descent, like 21 any number of citizen wives and daughters in the late sixth and early 22 fifth centuries. Nothing in the poem requires her to be a prostitute. In 23 fact, the poem suggests strongly that the girl is a parthenos rejecting any 24 attempt to marry or seduce her.22 Sharon James (2012, 83) suggests that 25 the young girl in the Cologne fragment of Archilochus is a free woman 26 and citizen. The poem “proposes, very surprisingly, that premarital sex- 27 ual activity might not destroy the reputation and life of a citizen girl.” 28 Some sympotic poems may discuss prostitutes, but we may also find elite 29 young women who are eroticized just as their elite male counterparts 30 were. They are kalai girls, pursued and seduced like the kaloi boys of 31 other poems and pots.23 32 Women might even participate in this elite erotic discourse. Two frag- 33 mentary vases found in the Athenian Agora contain inscriptions where 34 women record their erotic attachment to men. The first (Agora 21 C10) 35 says, “Lycomachus seems kalos to Ianthis.” The second, “Alcaeus seems 36 kalos to Melis.”24 Whereas Susan Cole (1981, 131) asserts that these 37 women must certainly be prostitutes because they would otherwise not 38 know men outside of their immediate families, these could simply be S39 R40

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1 elite women who admired certain young men. These kalos inscriptions fit 2 elite discourse, which elite women may have accessed more readily than 3 women of the lower classes. 4 We must remember two important points in order to understand the 5 role of elite women in the archaic symposium. First, not all Greeks shared 6 Athenian values concerning the separation of the sexes and, second, for- 7 eign marriages and influence were not uncommon among the Athenian 8 elite in the late archaic to early classical periods. The Athenian elite fre- 9 quently married women from Miletus, Eretria, the Black Sea settlements, 10 and Thrace, all of which were associated in antiquity with less strict 11 gender divisions and where elite women were more integrated into social 12 activities of dining and drinking. Miletus, where a large number of immi- 13 grants to Athens of elite status came from, was known in antiquity for its 14 luxury-loving hedonism.25 The influence of the Near East, specifically 15 Lydia, is considered an important source of these behaviors and the 16 accompanying luxuries.26 17 This lifestyle was widespread among the Ionians. Aside from the lyric 18 poetry of the archaic period (such as that of Sappho), the Clazomenian 19 sarcophagi from Acanthus in Chalcidike (ca. 540–500 BCE) are impor- 20 tant evidence. The image on one side of one of the tombs shows ban- 21 queters, men and women together, sharing couches. Some of their heads 22 are covered in extravagant head-wraps (sakkoi), considered Lydian in 23 style.27 Both Jan Paul Crielaard and Joseph Skinner remark that the pres- 24 ence of the women at the banquet image on the sarcophagus (in addition 25 to the head-wraps) suggests that this is an Eastern-inspired scene, a sign 26 of internationalism or cosmopolitanism instead of orientalism.28 The 27 presence of the women, though, is especially troubling to Skinner, who, 28 like Crielaard, suggests that the identity of the women was “ambiguous 29 since, by conventional standards and with obvious exception of hetairai 30 and slaves, women did not attend symposia.”29 It is more likely that 31 these Greeks simply did not follow conventional standards of their Athe- 32 nian neighbors any more than the Etruscans seem to have done or, pos- 33 sibly, the Locrians.30 In fact, the art of Eturia represents precisely the 34 aristocratic practices that, I argue, some Athenian households in the late 35 sixth and the early fifth century participated in.31 36 Throughout the sixth and fifth centuries, many elite Athenian fami- 37 lies married women from Ionian cities and participated in the interna- 38 tional culture of these cities and owned property in regions where this 39S lifestyle was more common. Many Athenians of all social classes had 40R access to what were considered Eastern goods and practices, especially

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styles of dress, hair styles, and adornments from the Persian Empire that 1 were considered accessible marks of luxury.32 We should consider that 2 the practice of shared dining and drinking was more widespread than a 3 handful of condemnations from the late fifth or fourth centuries suggest 4 they were.33 As Kelly Blazeby (2011) shows, whether it was considered 5 decent for men and women to dine and drink together in some texts 6 does not mean that men and women did not dine and drink together, 7 nor does it mean the women who did so were prostitutes.34 The nomoi of 8 these foreign women were foreign just as the nomoi of some Athenian 9 elites were considered foreign and were condemned at times as ‘un-­ 10 democratic.’35 This may be one reason why some women were slandered 11 in public by political enemies of their families, as we will see in the case 12 studies discussed below. It was among the elite that we see the most evi- 13 dence in fifth-century material remains of the adoption and adaptation 14 of Lydian and Persian practices and lifestyle.36 If we reconsider the het- 15 aira as originally a name used to refer to elite women, sometimes of for- 16 eign birth, who participated in sympotic and luxury culture, the 17 appearance of these women in both sympotic and political discourse 18 makes more sense, as does the way we have come to identify hetairai as 19 foreign women of renown, wealth, education, and access to the political 20 elite. It was only over time that their behavior and lifestyle came to be 21 associated with prostitutes or other women who shared or even imitated 22 the behaviors of these elite women but did not share their citizenship or 23 social position. 24 25 26 Elite Citizen Hetairai? 27 We find two women in our sources whose lifestyle and backgrounds 28 reflect the contexts described above: Elpinice and Coisyra. These women 29 were members of the most elite citizen families in Athens and both lived 30 at a time when the line between Athenians and other Greeks (and even 31 non-Greeks) was less pronounced and when evidence of foreign influ- 32 ence among the citizen elite was pervasive. Elpinice and Coisyra exhibit 33 behaviors and had reputations that would have marked them as the 34 hetairai-prostitutes of later texts if we did not know that they were mar- 35 ried citizen women. Elpinice’s father was the Athenian general Miltiades, 36 but her mother was the Thracian Hegesipyle, daughter of king Olorus of 37 Thrace—a real ‘Thracian filly.’ Was she wealthy? Absolutely. Did she 38 consort with famous men? She was the daughter of Miltiades, sister of S39 Cimon, wife of Callias, and linked in a number of anecdotes to Pericles. R40

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1 Did she have a distinguished or famous name of her own that is used in 2 public fora? This list is long. She was accused publicly of having incestu- 3 ous relations with her brother (Eupolis, Poleis fr. 221 A-K, Kock 208; and 4 then repeated by [Andocides.] 4.33; Plutarch, Cim. 4.8–9; Athenaeus 5 13.589e8–f2 paraphrasing Antisthenes) and to have offered herself sexu- 6 ally to Pericles to effect her brother’s return from exile (Athenaeus 7 13.589e8–f2; Plutarch, Per. 10.5–6 and Cim. 14.5, attributed originally 8 to Steisimbrotus, FrGH 107 F 5).37 She is also said to have questioned 9 publicly Pericles’ leadership during the Samian War at the annual funeral 10 oration (Plutarch, Per. 28.5–7). It is true that these references are prob- 11 ably all from the period after her death, which scholars typically claim to 12 be the only time a non-prostitute ‘respectable woman’ was named in 13 public.38 But these instances of public naming and criticism may reflect 14 what was said in her own lifetime, a thesis supported by her appearance 15 on an ostrakon (Kerameikos O 6874), ca. 480 BCE. (Fig. 1). This ostrakon 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39S Figure 1. KIMWN MILTIADOU ELPINIKHN LABWN ITW (Kimon, son of Miltia- 40R des, take Elpinice and go). Kerameikos O 6874. Photo by Rebecca Kennedy

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undisputedly positions her as a publicly well-known figure and, presum- 1 ably, a woman of ill-repute. As Stefan Brenne (1994, 13) argues, ostraka 2 did not simply function to list names, but also served to condemn, mock 3 or defame the individuals who appeared on them. A number of ostraka, 4 such as the Elpinice ostrakon, share characteristics with personal attacks 5 and invective from the comic stage—one of the public fora where sup- 6 posedly only ‘non-respectable’ women are named—and with iambic. 7 We do not know whether Elpinice was an intellectual or educated; she 8 was wealthy enough to have been educated. We do, however, have evi- 9 dence that Elpinice was associated with performance or modeling. She 10 supposedly modeled for and had an affair with the painter Polygnotus 11 (Plutarch, Cim. 4.6) while married to Callias. We are told that Polygno- 12 tus painted her image into the Stoa Poikile and Cnidian Lechê paintings 13 of the Sack of Troy, even going so far as to alter the myth slightly to 14 include her in the Athenian version (Plutarch, Cim. 4.7).39 It seems also 15 that Polygnotus included a representation of Elpinice herself on one 16 vase; her name at one time was visible above the seated woman shown 17 playing the aulos (Fig. 2).40 Elpinice had a number of associations linking 18 her to Polygnotus in ways that suggest it was popular gossip.41 It is also 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 Figure 2. Music or Dance school with “Elpinice” once inscribed over the seated 38 figure. Painting attributed to Polygnotus. 450–425 BCE. Naples 3232. Photo by S39 Max Goldman. R40

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1 likely that she was considered ‘respectable,’ given her aristocratic status 2 and family connections; it is even possible that there was a statue of her 3 garbed as a matron, dedicated on the Acropolis by her husband Callias.42 4 But according to our sources, Elpinice was not “well-behaved” (eu[takto~; 5 Plutarch, Cim. 4.6) and as the heavily eroticized anecdotes mentioned 6 earlier show, she acted like the hetairai of fourth-century oratory rather 7 than a citizen wife. And she may have been called a hetaira in the sense 8 that she was a female hetairos. She was an elite women who was associ- 9 ated in the minds of the Athenian public with luxury, sexuality, and the 10 sympotic lifestyle. But she was not a prostitute. 11 Elpinice was not alone in her behavior or reputation. Coisyra was an 12 older contemporary of Elpinice and her extravagant behavior was even 13 more notorious. Who was Coisyra? Until the 1960s, she was considered 14 a comic fantasy, a woman made up in order to represent the luxury and 15 arrogance of elite women. But then her name showed up on a handful of 16 ostraka. As with Elpinice, the appearance of Coisyra on these ostraka dem- 17 onstrates her public notoriety. In at least two of the ostraka, she is listed 18 as the mother of Megacles and wife of Hippocrates (Fig. 3).43 Brian 19 Lavelle (1989) has reasonably conjectured that she was the daughter of 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 Figure 3. [ME]GAKLHS [HI]PPOKRATWS [K]AI KOISURAS (Megakles, son of 39S HippoCrates and Coisyra). Kerameikos Ostraka (unpublished). Photo by 40R Rebecca Kennedy.

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Peisistratus and an Eretrian noblewoman also named Coisyra (an Ere- 1 trian name); her daughter was probably Agaristê, mother of Pericles.44 So 2 synonymous did Coisyra become with the idea of luxury and high living 3 that Aristophanes uses a verbalized version of her name, ejgkekoisurw- 4 mevnh (Coisyrafied, Nub. 48) and her name itself to characterize Strepsia- 5 des’ wife and son as extreme lovers of luxury (Nub. 799–800).45 As 6 Virginia Hunter (1990, 317) reminds us, one of the best and easiest 7 ways to attack a man was through his mother, whose citizen status was 8 significantly easier to question than a father’s would be.46 The scholia on 9 these passages in Aristophanes’ Clouds, as well as on Archarnians 614–8, 10 where Coisyra’s name also appears, call Coisyra and her son Megacles 11 either slaves or runaway slaves,47 something readers of oratory might 12 recognize as a standard line of attack against political opponents, used 13 frequently to help prove someone was not a citizen.48 Coisyra also had a 14 semblance of respectability as a member of two of the most elite citizen 15 families in Athens.49 But that semblance was countered by her public 16 reputation, a reputation not unlike that of Elpinice, though less eroti- 17 cized as far as we know, and perhaps the product not only of her luxuri- 18 ous way of life, but also of her status as the daughter of the tyrant 19 Peisistratus and wife of an Alcmaeonid.50 20 21 22 Conclusion 23 Elpinice and Coisyra suggest that Athens in the late sixth to the mid- 24 fifth century contained elite women living a lifestyle not unlike their 25 male aristocratic counterparts. They likely attended symposia, indulged 26 in fine food and wine, paraded about dressed like Lydian or Persian 27 nobles. These women were publicly notorious, if not scandalous, but 28 they were neither prostitutes nor courtesans.51 The gossipy anecdotes 29 about them describe behavior that resembles the definition of the hetaira 30 reconstructed by scholars from the orators and later writers like Athe- 31 naeus. But this was also a period when the elite culture of habrosunê 32 became the target of negative criticisms. This negative turn resulted from 33 two factors: first, the Persian Wars and its subsequent anti-Eastern rheto- 34 ric, and second, a turn toward isonomia and the connecting of luxury with 35 tyranny and hubris as the Athenians democratized more thoroughly.52 36 Elpinice and Coisyra were caught up in the politics of these events even 37 though they were citizen wives, ‘respectable’ women. This makes them 38 interesting case studies for understanding the evolution of the term het- S39 aira. We must dismiss the premise that women named publicly are either R40

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1 not ‘respectable’ or are prostitutes. In the case of Elpinice, this is simply 2 untrue. Instead, the naming and shaming of women in public fora formed 3 part of political discourse and was not uncommon, even if it was not 4 respectful.53 ‘Respected’ and ‘respectable’ are not quite the same thing.54 5 And the expected public roles for women, such as at funerals, suggests 6 that attempts to silence women, especially aristocratic women, were 7 linked to the politics of the city and not social mores.55 The female rela- 8 tives of prominent politicians were fair targets for public naming and 9 shaming, and neither Elpinice nor Coisyra were exempt. If we had ora- 10 tions from the first half of the fifth century, we would likely find citizen 11 women named in the courtroom invectives of the day as part of politics 12 as usual, women who might have endured challenges to their citizen 13 status (perhaps even their status as free persons) and talk of their sup- 14 posed sexual activities and indulgences, much like we see in fourth-­ 15 century oratory. In fourth-century oratory, women of lower status than 16 Elpinice and Coisyra found their status and relations under similar 17 attack, with an emphasis on their luxury-loving behavior. This lifestyle is 18 the mark, in fact, of their low status and threat to the polis; these women 19 were not said to have acted like a Coisyra, but to have acted hubristi- 20 cally.56 The proverbial associations of Coisyra with luxury and tyranny, 21 however, seem to have extended well into the fourth century. The origi- 22 nal citizen elite hetaira became the model for the noncitizen prostitute 23 hetaira. 24 This conclusion compels us to reconsider the connections we make 25 between hetairai, symposia, and prostitution. If we accept that elite 26 women like Elpinice and Coisyra participated in sympotic culture and 27 that women generally were subject to eroticization, then the question 28 about what a hetaira is changes. No longer do we ask, “What type of 29 prostitute was a hetaira?,” but “How did hetairai come to be associated 30 with prostitution?” The answer can only be found by trying to decon- 31 struct the prejudices that surrounded these women instead of assuming 32 the term hetaira was an unproblematic job description. The word hetaira, 33 when it appears, cannot always be translated as “prostitute” or “courte- 34 san,” nor is the behavior of a woman or the appearance of her name in 35 oratory or comedy enough to decide her social status and occupation. 36 We should not take at face value the accusations and narratives of the 37 orators when they attack a woman. The term hetaira, as its trajectory in 38 the later fifth century and beyond shows, was likely used as a slander 39S against any woman whose behavior was considered scandalous on some 40R level, women who were considered by their social superiors to be sexually

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available to them. Such scandalous behavior could have included simply 1 being poor and without male family. It may have been attached in the 2 early fifth century to prostitutes who attended symposia, as a slur on 3 elite women like Elpinice and Coisyra. The term was intentionally 4 ambiguous, which requires us to be more thoughtful and cautious in 5 viewing it as a distinctive status category.57 When we consider real 6 women who were not prostitutes, but who exhibited the behaviors we 7 associate with it and when we scrutinize the category of the hetaira, we 8 open up additional avenues of inquiry into the lives of women in Athens 9 in the classical period, especially those women for who have traditionally 10 been deemed prostitutes.58 11 12 Works Cited 13 14 Blazeby, C. 2011. “Women + Wine = Prostitute in Classical Athens?” In Glazebrook 15 and Henry 2011a, 86–105. Bonfante, L. 1981. “Etruscan Women and their Aristocratic Society.” Women’s Studies 16 8: 157–87. 17 Brenne, S. 1994. “Ostraka and the Process of Ostrakophoria.” In W. D. E. Coulson et 18 al., ed., The Archaeology of Athens and Attica Under the Democracy. Oxford. 13–24. 19 Brown, C. 1997. “Iambos.” In D. Gerber, ed., A Companion to the Greek Lyric Poets. 20 Leiden. 13–88. 21 Burton, J. 1998. “Women’s Commensality in the Ancient Greek World.” G&R 45: 143–65. 22 Carey, C. 1986. “Archilochus and Lycambes.” CQ 36: 60–7. 23 Castriota, D. 1992. Myth, Ethos, and Actuality: Official Art in Fifth-century BC Athens. 24 Madison. 25 Cole, S. 1981. “Could Greek Women Read and Write?” Women’s Studies 8: 129–55. 26 Corner, S. 2012. “Did ‘Respectable’ Women Attend Symposia?” G&R 59: 34–45. Crielaard, J. P. 2009. “The Ionians in the Archaic Period: Shifting Identities in a 27 Changing World.” In T. Derks and N. Roymans, eds., Ethnic Constructs in Antiq- 28 uity: The Role of Power and Tradition. Amsterdam. 37–84. 29 Davidson, J. 2006. “Making a Spectacle of Her(self): The Greek Courtesan and the 30 Art of the Present.” In M. Feldman and B. Gordon, eds., The Courtesan’s Art: 31 Cross-Cultural Perspectives. New York. 29–51. 32 Davies, J. 1971. Athenian Propertied Families, 600–300 BC. Oxford. Dover, K. 1978. Greek Homosexuality. London. 33 Eidinow, E. 2010. “Patterns of Persecution: ‘Witchcraft’ Trials in Classical Athens.” 34 P&P 208: 9–35. 35 Faraone, C.A. 2006. “The Priestess and Courtesan: The Ambivalence of Female Lead- 36 ership in Aristophanes’ Lysistrata.” In Faraone and McClure 2006, 207–23. 37 ———, and L. McClure, eds. 2006. Prostitutes and Courtesans in the Ancient World. Madison. 38 Gardner, P. 1918. “A Female Figure in the Early Style of Pheidias.” JHS 38: 1–26. S39 Gilhuly, K. 2009. The Feminine Matrix of Sex and Gender in Classical Athens. Cambridge. R40

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1 Glazebrook, A. 2005. “The Making of a Prostitute: Apollodoros’s Portrait of Neaira.” 2 Arethusa 38: 161–87. ———. 2006. “The Bad Girls of Athens: The Image and Function of Hetairai in Judi- 3 cial Oratory.” In Faraone and McClure 2006, 125–38. 4 ———. 2012. “Prostitutes, Plonk, and Play: Female Banqueters on a Red-Figure Psyk- 5 ter from the Hermitage.” CW 105: 497–524. 6 ———, and M. Henry, eds. 2011a. Greek Prostitutes in the Ancient Mediterranean, 800 7 BCE–200 CE. Madison. 8 ———. 2011b. “Introduction.” In Glazebrook and Henry 2011a, 3–13. Gomme, A.W. 1925. “The Position of Women in Athens in the Fifth and Fourth Cen- 9 turies” CP 20: 1–25. :Griffth, M. 1995. “Brilliant Dynasts: Power and Politics in the ‘Oresteia.’” CA 14.1 10 11 62–129. 12 Hardwick, L. 1993. “Philemon and Pericles: Silence in the Funeral Speech.” G&R 40: 13 147–62. Henry, M. 1985. Menander’s Courtesans and the Greek Comic Tradition. Frankfurt am 14 Main. 15 Hickman, K. 2004. Courtesans: Money, Sex and Fame in the Nineteenth Century. London. 16 Hobden, F. 2013. The Symposion in Ancient Greek Society and Thought. Cambridge. 17 Hölscher, T. 1973. Griechische Historienbilder des 5. und 4. Jahrhunderts. Würzburg. 18 Hunter, V. 1990. “Gossip and the Politics of Reputation in Classical Athens.” Phoenix 19 44: 299–325. Izzet, V. “Etruscan Women: Towards a Reappraisal.” In James 2012a, 66–77. 20 James, S. 2012. “Sex and the Single Girl: The Cologne Fragment of Archilochus.” In 21 James 2012a, 81–3. 22 James, S., ed. 2012a. A Companion to Women in the Ancient World. Malden. 81–3. 23 Kebric, R. 1983. The Paintings in the Cnidian Lesche at Delphi and Their Historical Context. 24 Leiden. Kennedy, R. F. 2014 Immigrant Women in Athens: Gender, Ethnicity, and Citizenship in the 25 Classical City. New York. 26 Keuls, E. 1993. The Reign of the Phallus. Berkeley. 27 Kreilinger, U. 2006. “To Be or Not to Be a Hetaira: Female Nudity in Classical Ath- 28 ens.” In S. Schroer, ed., Images and Gender: Contributions to the Hermeneutics of Read- 29 ing Ancient Art. Göttingen. 249–61. 30 Kurke, L. 1992. “The Politics of Habrosunê in Archaic Greece.” CA 11: 91–120. ———.1997. “Inventing the Hetaira: Sex, Politics, and Discursive Conflict in Archaic 31 Greece.” CA 16: 106–50. 32 Kushner, N. 2014. Erotic Exchanges: The World of Elite Prostitution in Eighteenth-Century 33 Paris. Ithaca. 34 Lang, M. 1976. Graffiti and Dipinti. The Athenian Agora, 21. Princeton. 35 Lavelle, B. 1989. “Coisyra and Megacles, the Son of Hippokrates.” GRBS 30: 36 503–13. Lewis, S. 2002. The Athenian Woman: An Iconographic Handbook. London and New York. 37 McClure, L. 2003. Courtesans at Table: Gender and Greek Literary Culture in Athenaeus. 38 London and New York. 39S Miller, M. 1997. Athens and Persia in the Fifth Century BC: A Study in Cultural Receptivity. 40R Cambridge.

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Pomeroy, S. 1994. Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves. New York. 1 Pritchard, D. “The Position of Attic Women in Classical Athens.” G&R 61: 174–93. 2 Redfield, J. 2003.The Locrian Maidens: Love and Death in Greek Italy. Princeton. 3 Reinsberg, C. 1989. Ehe, Hetaerentum, und Knabenleibe im antiken Griechenland. Munich. Rounding, V. 2004. Grandes Horizontales: The Lives and Legends of Four Nineteenth-­Century 4 Courtesans. London. 5 Rusten, J., ed. 2011. The Birth of Comedy: Texts, Documents, and Art from Athenian Comic 6 Competitions, 486–280. Baltimore. 7 Schaps, D. 1977. “The Woman Least Mentioned: Etiquette and Women’s Names.” 8 CQ 27: 323–30. 9 Shear, T. L. 1963. “Coisyra: Three Women of Athens.” Phoenix 17: 99–112. Skinner, J. 2012. The Invention of Greek Ethnography: From Homer to Herodotus. Oxford. 10 Sommerstein, A. 1980. “The Naming of Women in Greek and Roman Comedy.” QS 11 11: 393–418. 12 Stafford, E. 2013. “From the Gymnasium to the Wedding: Eros in Athenian Art and 13 Cult.” In E. Sanders, C. Thuminger, C. Carey, and N. Lowe, eds., Eros in Classical 14 Greece. Oxford. 175–208. Stroup, S. 2004. “Designing Women: Aristophanes’s Lysistrata and the ‘Hetairization’ 15 of the Greek Wife.” Arethusa 37: 37–73. 16 Sutton, R. 1992. “Pornography and Persuasion on Attic Pottery.” In A. Richlin, ed., 17 Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome. Oxford. 3–35. 18 Topper, K. 2012. The Imagery of the Athenian Symposium. Cambridge. 19 Vout, C. 2013. Sex on Show: Seeing the Erotic in Greece and Rome. Berkeley. 20 Wecowski, M. 2014. The Rise of the Greek Aristocratic Banquet. Oxford. West, M. 1993. Greek Lyric Poetry: Translated with Introduction and Notes. Oxford. 21 22 Notes 23 24 1. The exception is Lewis 2002 which argues forcefully for a reevaluation of this 25 position. For other recent reevaluations of women on vases, see Kreilinger 2006, ­Blazeby 2011, Glazebrook 2012, Topper 2012, and Vout 2013. 26 2. This is generally viewed as correct; see Dover 1978, 20–1. Davidson (2006, 27 35–6) disagrees with Dover’s etymology and instead derives hetaira from hetaros, with 28 hetairos being derived from the feminine. This, however, makes it less likely that the 29 term’s early usage was as a slur on women. Wecowski (2014, 34) asserts that the word 30 hetaira is feminized from hetairos because the women participated in the same activities 31 at the symposium. These women, however, are definitely prostitutes for him. 3. It has been more common to use courtesan in the past, but Rusten (2011) sim- 32 ply uses “prostitute” or even “whore.” 33 4. E.g., Corner 2012, which argues to reaffirm the connection between symposia 34 and women who are not ‘respectable.’ Davidson (2006, 36) includes married women 35 available for adultery under his definition of hetaira, thus using a definition of ‘respect- 36 able’ that denotes behavior, not status. Wecowski (2014, 33 note 50) states that Cor- ner “rightly” rejects any attempts to allow ‘respectable’ women at a symposium. He 37 also conflates ‘not respectable’ and prostitute. 38 5. Kennedy 2014, 112–7. S39 6. The issue seems to be that most scholars conflate citizen and wife. This is likely R40

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1 a result of conflating the Citizenship Law of 451 BCE with a ban on marriage between 2 citizen and foreigner. It is unclear whether the citizenship law actually banned mar- riage; see Kennedy 2014, 12–25. On the way Apollodorus constructs Neaira’s identity 3 in [Dem.] 59 through this exclusionary tactic, see Glazebrook 2005 and below in this 4 paper. 5 7. Pomeroy’s famously title Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves is not the begin- 6 ning of this dichotomy, but has been widely influential in maintaining it. Keuls 1993 7 is premised on this ideological divide being absolute and strictly enforced in reality. 8 8. A recent example of such an approach is Gilhuly 2009, which argues for a “matrix” that includes on an ideological continuum prostitutes, wives, and “ritual per- 9 formers” whose public status complicated their respectability. 10 9. Priestesses held an ambiguous position in this regard; see Faraone 2006 and 11 Gilhuly 2009. For a general overview of citizen women in classical Athens, see 12 Pritchard 2014. 13 10. There are dangers, as Kurke (1997, 107) points out, to taking texts as straight- forward reflections of reality, but the extensive focus on ideology has led to the disap- 14 pearance of women themselves from the history of women. They have become a series 15 of discourses with no connection to real life. 16 11. See Kurke 1997 note 3 and the introduction to Glazebrook and Henry 2011b, 17 4–5 for references to earlier scholarship upholding this view. Both Kurke and Glaze- 18 brook and Henry view the distinction as false. 19 12. There has been a great deal of interest in the great age of courtesans in recent years. Some informative reads include Hickman 2003, Rounding 2003, and Kushner 20 2014. On courtesans in Italy and East Asia, see also Feldman and Gordon 2006. 21 13. See, however, Glazebrook 2005 and 2006 on hetaira as a derogatory term and 22 association with the symposium as negative. 23 14. For a discussion of these women, see Kennedy 2014, 97–122. 24 15. One passage often used to demonstrate that hetaira meant prostitute is Menander, Dys. 57–68. In that passage, however, the young man is not calling the girl 25 a prostitute. He is saying that he could rape a girl of hetaira status because there would 26 be no accountability, and in law, this was true. A woman without a kurios did not have 27 legal recourse in the courts for certain crimes against her even if she was a metic with 28 a prostates; see Kennedy 2014, 97–106. 29 16. Kurke (1992 and 1997) has discussed both hetairai and habrosunê extensively. 30 17. For a discussion of the sexual status of female entertainers at symposia, see Goldman in this volume. 31 18. These vases are typically dated between 525–475 BCE. It is not until the 32 fourth century that texts make any explicit link between drinking at symposia and the 33 word hetaira, the most explicit being [Dem.] 59, Against Neaira; see Kennedy 2014, 34 103–14. 35 19. There is a conjectured use of hetaira at Bacchilydes 13.57. It is not possible to 36 associate that use with prostitution. 20. See Burton 1998 on women’s commensality. Corner (2012) rejects Burton’s 37 arguments because “only prostitutes attended symposia,” stated without argument. 38 21. For the eroticization of women in wedding images on vases from the second 39S half of the fifth century, see Sutton 1992 and Stafford 2013. 40R 22. Kurke (1997, 113–4) bases her assessment that the woman is a prostitute on

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the first-century CE commentator Heracleitus’s statement that the girl’s attitude is 1 “hetairic.” Further proofs: the girl is Thracian and she is compared to a horse playing 2 in the meadows, which Gentili (cited in Kurke 1997, 114 note 20) claims “suggests a 3 woman who is sexually free and promiscuous.” Kurke herself acknowledges in a note that the language of the poem is applicable to a parthenos. The association of parthenoi 4 and frolicking in fields dates back to Nausicaa in Homer’sOdyssey and also Persephone 5 in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. 6 23. On the extensive use of kalos in sympotic contexts, see Dover 1978, 111–24 7 and Davidson 2009, 352–6. 8 24. Lukovmac[o~ kalo;~] [d]okei` Ianqivd[—] (C10); Al{l}kai`o~ {Alkai`o~} kalo;~ to; 9 dokei` Mevliti (C19). Pictured in Lang 1976, plates 3 and 4. C19 has an additional inscription noting that Puqovdro~ kalov[~. Munich 2421 (ca. 500 BCE)—discussed at 10 Kurke 1997, 135–6 on ARV2 23.7, Para 323, Addenda2 155; pictured in Reinsberg 11 1989, Fig. 61—is also typically thought to show prostitutes. It shows an older man 12 admiring the kalos Euthymides on the hydria proper while two female symposiasts, 13 naked from the waist up and playing kottabos, say, “I cast for you, kalos Euthymides.” 14 There is no need, however, to attribute a specific status to the women to understand the vase. 15 25. Crielaard 2009, 57–63 for sources and discussion. 16 26. Xenophanes, fr. 210, is a key passage; see Kurke 1992. Other examples are the 17 Etruscans and the Locrians of southern Italy, whose iconography of men and women 18 dining together has often led scholars (and some ancient Greeks and Romans as well) 19 to accuse them of sexual deviancy and of prostituting their wives and daughters; see, 20 e.g., Theopompus, Hist. 115 (FGrHist F204). 27. See Crielaard 2009, 62 for image. Lydian dress should not be assumed to indi- 21 cate foreign prostitution in any image since such adornment was not restricted to 22 either noncitizens or to one class or type of woman. The sakkos, for example, is worn 23 by citizen and noncitizen women alike on grave stele. As Miller (1997, 153) remarks, 24 “In many a system of fashion incorporation of ‘exotic’ elements plays a significant role, 25 but they are never so emphatic as to disguise the wearer as a member of the alien culture.” 26 28. Crielaard 2009, 61. Similarly, Getty 86.A3.293 (ca. 480–470 BCE), a komos 27 scene by the Briseis painter, shows men and women both dressed in the more volumi- 28 nous garments of Eastern influence as well as Lydian-style head wraps on both men 29 and women. 30 29. Skinner 2013, 94. He refers to a story at Herodutus 5.18–20, where the son of 31 the Macedonian king Amyntas becomes angered at Darius’s envoys who requested that the wives of the Macedonians dine with them, though it was not Macedonian 32 custom. Macedonian practice should not be conflated with general Greek practices. 33 See also Herodotus 1.146, where the practice of husbands and wives not dining 34 together in certain Ionian cities was explained as a reaction to the murder of the Car- 35 ian families of the first wives of the Greek colonists who settled the cities. 36 30. On the Locrians, see Redfield 2003, 201–307. 31. See Bonfante 1981 on Etruscan couples and its meaning in art; also pp. 166–9 37 esp. on the relationship to Greek aristocratic mores. For a reassessment of Etruscan 38 women generally, see Izzet 2012. S39 32. See Miller 1997, 63–88 on Persian goods in fifth-century Athens. Miller traces R40

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